When Leaving Doesn't Feel Like an Option: The Silent Struggle of South Asian Women and Divorce Stigma

When Leaving Means Losing More Than a Marriage

By Dr. Bindu Babu

There is a truth many South Asian families know exists, yet rarely speak about openly.

We know it is there.

We have heard the conversations behind closed doors. We have watched women we love live through it quietly. We have seen it in our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, our friends—and maybe.. some of us have lived it ourselves.

The struggle is not unfamiliar to us. The silence surrounding it is.

Because what happens when a woman is deeply unhappy in her marriage and begins to consider leaving?

Not every South Asian family thinks the same way. Not every marriage is the same. And this is not an argument that women should leave their marriages.

It is a conversation about something far more uncomfortable:

Why can staying be accepted without explanation, while leaving has to be justified?

The expectations surrounding marriage can become so deeply woven into family, culture, community, religion, movies and society that a woman may absorb them long before she is old enough to question them.

No one necessarily has to sit her down and explain the rules.

Somehow, she already knows.

When marriage becomes difficult:

Try harder.

Adjust.

Compromise.

Forgive.

Pray.

Think about the children.

Think about your parents.

Think about the family.

Think about what people will say.

Think about everyone.

And somewhere in all of that thinking, there may be one person she was never taught she was equally allowed to think about:

herself.

And one possibility that may never have felt fully available to her:

Leaving.

So when she finally says,

“I don't think I can live like this anymore,”

the first questions may not be:

What happened?

Are you okay?

What have you been living through?

Instead, another conversation begins.

What will people say?

Think about your parents.

What will happen to the children?

You are their mother. You have to sacrifice.

Every marriage has problems.

Women before you endured much worse.

Marriage is for life.

Divorce doesn't happen in families like ours.

You have to make it work.

What will our community think?

What will our religion say?

Who will accept you afterward?

And there it is.

The conversation no one wants to have, but so many women already know.

We say marriage is between two people. Yet when a South Asian woman considers leaving one, suddenly it can feel as though the marriage belongs to everyone.

Her parents.

His parents.

The children.

The extended family.

The religious community.

The social circle.

The family reputation.

Society.

Everyone seems to have something to say about whether she should stay.

And sometimes, the woman actually living inside the marriage becomes the last person whose voice is heard.

We spend so much time asking what her leaving will do to everyone else that we may never stop to ask:

What has staying already done to her?

When Sympathy Turns Into Judgment

While she stays, people may know she is suffering.

They may have watched the relationship change her. They may know about the betrayal, control, infidelity, humiliation, manipulation, years of conflict, or countless chances she has given.

They may say:

I feel so sorry for her.

She has been through so much.

I don't know how she does it.

She is so strong.

But then one day, she stops enduring.

She leaves.

And somehow, the conversation changes.

How could she just leave?

Couldn't she have stayed for the children?

Maybe she gave up too soon.

Why would she do this to her family?

What will people think?

Her poor parents.

Will this affect her siblings' chances of finding a good match?

The woman we once felt sorry for while she was suffering can suddenly become the woman we judge for refusing to continue suffering.

What does that say about us?

Somewhere along the way, we confused a woman's ability to endure with her responsibility to endure.

They are not the same thing.

And leaving does not necessarily mean she did not try.

Sometimes leaving comes after years of conversations, forgiveness, promises, second chances, disappointment, and hope that tomorrow might finally be different.

We see the day she leaves.

We may know very little about the years that brought her there.

When Judgment Becomes Isolation

Judgment does not always remain a whisper.

Sometimes friends become uncomfortable.

Relatives distance themselves.

Invitations change.

Families choose sides.

People who once sympathized with what she was living through may suddenly become uncomfortable when she decides she can no longer live through it.

Judgment becomes isolation.

For many South Asian women, community is woven deeply into everyday life—family gatherings, weddings, holidays, religious spaces, friendships, traditions, and relationships that may have existed for most of her life.

So leaving can carry another fear beyond the loss of the marriage:

Will I still belong?

Will the people who understood why I was hurting still stand beside me now that I have chosen to leave what was hurting me?

A woman may have spent years feeling alone inside her marriage, only to leave and discover that she is expected to feel alone outside of it too.

Supporting her does not mean celebrating divorce.

It does not mean deciding whether she should stay or leave.

It means refusing to make shame, judgment, and isolation the price she pays for making a decision about her own life.

Why Is the Responsibility Always Hers?

Your mother stayed.

Your grandmother stayed.

Stay for the children.

These words can carry generations of expectation.

The women before us showed extraordinary strength. But we do not always know whether they stayed because they freely chose to—or because leaving was never truly available to them.

There may have been financial dependence.

Social consequences.

Religious expectations.

Family pressure.

Fear of being rejected by the community.

Or simply nowhere else to go.

We can honor the sacrifices of the women who came before us without asking another generation of women to inherit their suffering.

Everything they endured should give their daughters more choices, not fewer.

And then there are the children.

Of course they matter.

Their stability matters. Their emotional well-being matters. Their relationship with both parents matters.

But if we ask what leaving will do to them, shouldn't we also be willing to ask what years of living inside a deeply unhealthy relationship—filled with conflict, tension, fear, disrespect, abuse- physical & mental, or emotional instability—may be teaching them about love?

What are they learning about marriage?

About respect?

About boundaries?

About what a woman is expected to tolerate to keep a family together?

And there is an even more uncomfortable question:

Why do we hold her responsible for keeping the marriage together, but not hold her partner equally responsible for the behavior that may be breaking it apart?

Why is so much attention placed on the moment she leaves, rather than everything that happened before she reached the door?

Why is her decision to leave questioned more than the behavior that brought her to that decision?

Sometimes leaving isn't what broke the family.

Sometimes leaving simply reveals what had already been breaking it.

Leaving Does Not Mean She Failed at Marriage

Choosing to leave does not mean a woman did not value her marriage.

It does not mean she took her vows lightly.

It does not mean she did not try hard enough.

And it certainly does not mean this was the life she imagined for herself.

One of the greatest losses in leaving a marriage is not only the marriage itself.

It is the life she believed she was going to have.

The family she imagined.

Growing old together.

Raising her children in one home.

The holidays.

The traditions.

The memories.

The ordinary evenings.

The vacations.

The future she had already pictured so clearly that it felt almost like a memory.

She may know she cannot continue living the way she has been living and still grieve deeply for the life she wanted so badly to make work.

She isn't only leaving a marriage. She is grieving a dream.

And sometimes the woman who leaves is the very woman who spent years desperately trying not to.

She forgave.

She hoped.

She gave another chance.

She believed promises.

She held on because she believed in her family, her commitment, and the possibility that things could change.

Perhaps she continued to see the potential in her partner long after she stopped recognizing herself.

Marriage takes work.

People make mistakes.

Relationships go through difficult seasons.

And some marriages do heal when both people are willing to take responsibility, rebuild trust, and create meaningful change.

But there is a difference between working through a difficult marriage and continually losing yourself trying to save one.

There is value in forgiveness when there is accountability.

There is value in second chances when something actually changes.

And there is value in fighting for a marriage when two people are fighting for it together.

So we need to stop assuming that the woman who leaves simply gave up.

Sometimes leaving comes after she has given everything she knows how to give—and finally realizes she has been trying so hard to save the marriage that she is slowly breaking herself in the process.

The Woman She Never Thought She Would Become

There is another quiet loss in leaving a marriage that we rarely talk about: the identity a woman may have to let go of.

Before divorce ever became part of her own story, she may have had beliefs about that woman.

That would never be me.

I would try harder.

I would keep my family together.

Marriage is forever.

What would people think?

And then life places her on the other side of everything she once believed.

Suddenly, she is not only grieving her marriage. She is confronting her own judgment of the woman she has now become.

She may have to unlearn the belief that leaving means she failed. Unlearn the shame, the stigma, and the expectations she inherited about what a wife, a mother, or a “good woman” is supposed to endure.

And perhaps one of the hardest parts of healing is forgiving herself for becoming someone she once believed she would never be.

But with time, she may begin to understand that woman differently.

Sometimes we judge women from the outside because we have never had to live their choices from the inside.

And sometimes it takes becoming that woman to finally understand her.

We Can Love Our Culture and Still Allow It to Evolve

None of this requires us to reject South Asian culture.

There is extraordinary beauty within our cultures.

Family.

Community.

Faith.

Tradition.

Loyalty.

Respect for our elders.

The way generations care for one another.

The feeling of belonging to something larger than ourselves.

These are values worth preserving.

But loving our culture does not mean we cannot lovingly question the places where it may need to grow.

We can value marriage without believing every marriage must survive at any cost.

We can honor our elders without believing every hardship they endured must be repeated.

We can protect family without asking one person to disappear in order to preserve its appearance.

We can respect faith and commitment while recognizing that there may be circumstances in which leaving becomes a legitimate choice.

And we can teach our daughters the beauty of commitment without teaching them that suffering silently is what makes them good women.

Culture evolves when we are brave enough to preserve what is beautiful while questioning what is hurting us.

That is not abandoning our values.

It is allowing those values to evolve with compassion.

It is asking whether the values we cherish are being practiced in ways that protect the dignity of everyone—including the woman whose life may not unfold the way her family once imagined it would.

It Is Our Response That Needs to Change

This conversation is not about encouraging women to leave their marriages.

It is about how we respond when a woman tells us she can no longer remain in hers.

Instead of immediately asking:

What will people say?

Did you try hard enough?

What about the children?

Perhaps our first question should simply be:

“What have you been living through?”

Because we may never know everything that came before her decision.

And she should not have to prove that she has suffered enough for us to respect her humanity.

We can value marriage without glorifying suffering.

We can honor our culture without using it to silence women.

Sometimes support begins with something much simpler:

Listening without judgment and allowing her the dignity to choose what comes next.

South Asian Women and Divorce Stigma: How We See the Woman Who Leaves

Perhaps the deeper issue was never only divorce.

It was how we see the woman who chooses it.

We may acknowledge her suffering privately yet struggle to stand beside her publicly.

We may worry about the appearance of a broken marriage without knowing what had already been broken inside it.

So perhaps we need to begin asking different questions.

Not:

“Why did she leave?”

But:

“What did she live through before she felt she had to?”

And instead of spending so much time worrying about what people will say, perhaps each of us should ask:

What will I say?

Will I whisper?

Will I judge?

Will I distance myself?

Or will I be the parent, sibling, friend, relative, or community member who reminds her:

“You still belong here. You are not alone.”

Because real cultural change begins when woman no longer has to choose between leaving a relationship that is breaking her and losing the people who were supposed to stand beside her through it.

Marriage matters.

Family matters.

Children matter.

Faith matters.

Culture matters.

Community matters.

And she matters too.

We can honor all of these while still having the courage to change the parts of our culture that ask women to suffer quietly in order to belong.

Let us be the generation that chooses compassion over judgment and understanding over shame.

Let us raise daughters who value commitment, but also know their own worth.

Let us raise sons who understand that preserving a marriage is not a woman's responsibility alone.

Let us create families where a woman does not have to become completely broken before we believe she has a right to make a different choice.

And let us cultivate that change with love, compassion, and understanding—

so another generation does not learn that suffering in silence is the price of belonging.

— Dr. Bindu Babu

About Dr. Bindu Babu

Dr. Bindu Babu, MD, PhD, is an author, international speaker, and transformational coach whose work centers on relationships, self-worth, healing, consciousness, and personal transformation. Through her writing and work with women, she encourages a deeper understanding of the patterns that shape our lives, the courage to question what no longer serves us, and the self-trust to consciously choose what comes next.

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